


something special

by vanitaslaughing



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: 11yo somnus JUST got up he doesnt exist yet, Accidental Naps, Birthday Presents, Childhood Friends, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 02:12:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18650812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanitaslaughing/pseuds/vanitaslaughing
Summary: Ardyn's turning 15 and he requested no big celebrations.Aera's still going to get him the best present ever; his birthday's the second most important thing after her own birthday after all! She recruits Somnus for that cause, even if he's definitely not good company this early in the morning. But! They've got a plan. This time it's gonna be something special!It doesn't go exactly as planned.





	something special

**Author's Note:**

> happy birthday, ardyn! you glorious, glorious bastard

There were three things that were absolutely certain. One, the nights were dangerous with the recent surge of the plague. Two, he needed to protect his people no matter how, but a solution to the issue eluded him for now.

Three, seeing Aera pull his brother through the halls with that mischievous twinkle in her bright blue eyes was never a good sign. Especially not before dawn—Somnus, true to his name, liked his sleep and turned into a grouch worse than most plague-ridden monsters whenever he was woken pre-emptively.

“Somnus, Aera,” he called for the two softly—and Aera froze as if she had been caught stealing.

“Ardyn! You’re up already?” She was extraordinarily bright for an eight-year-old, with a vested interest in ruins and anything older than most history books. Ardyn frowned, trying to think of possible places she could steal herself off to—with his brother, no less. Somnus, who hated leaving bed early, who hated being up before dawn. Surely enough, his eleven-year-old brother stared at him with dead eyes and a completely blank expression, like someone who had been raised from the dead. And with how deeply Somnus generally slept, he had likely been raised from the dead.

How had Aera even managed that? No one managed that.

“Ghhmrng,” was all Somnus said, a half-aborted ‘good morning’ from the sounds of it, and he leaned off to the side. It wouldn’t have been the first time to see his brother fall asleep on his feet with his eyes open, but Aera tugged his arm before he could doze off again.

“Where might you be off to this early?” He hoped that his voice got across his suspicion and worry.

If it did, it fell upon deaf through wilfully ignoring it and through being too tired to care ears. Aera tugged on his brother’s arm again. “Somnus promised me he’d show me some tricks with the lance!”

“Did he, now?” Somehow Ardyn doubted that. Most of the time Somnus brooded over strategy books and fruitlessly attempted to get strong enough for their father’s most trusted soldier to notice him and take him in for proper training. Aera usually stuck around the libraries and Ardyn anyway. “Somnus?”

“Mh-hmm.”

“Is she telling the truth?”

“Mh-hmm.”

“Are you lying, brother dearest?”

“Mhm-mhm.”

“Are you even awake?”

“Mhhh.”

“How on earth did she get you out of bed this early?”

“Brhm.”

“Words, Somnus.”

“Mh-hmm.”

Ardyn sighed—the sandal wasn’t even tied properly. Somnus legitimately looked as if Aera had used all strength in her body to shove him out of bed and then quickly dressed him. “Don’t leave before the sun has risen properly. The training grounds are very unsafe before daylight.”

“Yes, yes! We know that much, don’t we, Somnus?”

“Bhzodyn.”

“You heard him! Buzz off, Ardyn!”

Before he could do anything else, Aera pulled on Somnus’ arm and his mostly dead asleep brother stumbled after her as she led them through the halls.

He watched them leave, Aera stomping on the marble floors and berating Somnus for being so sleepy, and Somnus not reacting to her tirade the slightest.

* * *

By the time the sun had risen enough for a servant to let them go, Somnus had woken up enough to resemble a halfway living person. Well, a living person that walked about without stumbling over his own feet and his eyes so clouded and heavy with sleep that he looked more dead on his feet than anything else, but even with the light of the morning sun, he was rather pale. Aera scowled—he had agreed to that, he had even been the first to go to bed. Yet somehow he still managed to mess up their plans for the day.

“Come _on,_ sleepyhead!”

“Haste makes… waste.”

“Well, what you’re doing is wasting daylight!” He was ruining _her_ plans at the very least and she was going to let him know. “Come on, come on, come _on!”_

She wasn’t going to let him ruin her plans for the day. This was perhaps the most important day after her own birthday—Ardyn’s birthday. Somnus had agreed to help her get the two things she wanted to give Ardyn, and she was going to hold him true to that promise. Pulling her companion along, Aera made a beeline for the close-by settlement.

Ardyn had recently started learning everything about herbs. He said he wanted to be a healer of some sort, offering help to the sick and Aera was determined to help him. She was good at reading, but no one was going to sell her a book on all that nonsense—and she wouldn’t know what to get anyway. Telling any sort of servant was going to cause trouble, because they were all required to answer Ardyn without lying. Somnus had been the only correct choice; he was old enough that people took him serious and not obligated to answer his brother, being too asleep to even say words notwithstanding.

But that wasn’t the only place she wanted to go. There was a clearing up on a nearby hill, past the endless wheat fields. People claimed that in the past there had been witches gathering there, and whether that was true or not remained a mystery to people today. What Aera know, however, was that some of the prettiest flowers bloomed there. Bright red, swaying in the wind. They weren’t like Sylleblossoms—they were something different. Lilies of some sort, she reckoned—but what was important was that they were pretty and they reminded her of Ardyn’s hair whenever he sat in the library with the sun shining on his head.

Somnus yawned loudly when they arrived at the market. Thankfully enough his tiredness seemed to make people think he was even older, maybe even a teenager who hadn’t hit a growth spurt yet despite the fact that his face was a little too soft and his voice much too high. Ardyn’s voice had started changing—and he was so much taller now. Tall enough to reach all the shelves that she and Somnus couldn’t reach.

A few hours passed like this, with the people being all friendly and her demanding every book that Somnus could manage carrying. It was quite a lot. Five heavy tomes, all stuffed into a basket he had gotten as a gift as he dragged three of them around to the next stall that carried books on herbology. The basketweaver had said something about such mature little ones being that unprepared hurting her a little with that far-off look on her face that grown-ups all got whenever they talked about people who got sick and vanished.

While she pondered on that, Somnus had wandered off and gotten something—he handed her some still warm bread, but there was something else in that basket that she couldn’t see quite clearly. It looked like a satchel of some sort.

“We skipped breakfast,” he muttered, and Aera chirped out a sincere thanks. “So where do we go from here for that… wreath, you said?”

Aera pointed in the right direction. It was going to be quite a walk.

Somnus sighed, but offered her his free hand after he put his half-eaten piece of bread into the basket. She took it.

“Well, off we go.”

“I thought haste makes waste?”

“Weren’t you the one nearly tearing off my arm earlier?”

She laughed—and Somnus joined in with a soft chuckle.

* * *

He had requested not having a celebration this year—at least not in the middle of the week. With his father’s recent passing, Ardyn was not entirely in the mood to celebrate his birthday, especially with how gloomy Somnus had been until a few days ago. He tried to focus on his books, but as the hours ticked by he became painfully aware of how quiet it was.

Normally Aera made some sort of noise as she tried getting books too heavy or too advanced for her, normally right outside the window in the training field Somnus would yell in frustration after a while.

When he asked a servant if she had seen the two, she only said that they had set out for the wheat fields.

So they had been lying about the training thing. Knowing Aera she was likely dragging Somnus off for a game of hide-and-seek in her favourite place.

He almost considered joining them.

But, alas, he continued reading for another few hours.

It was late afternoon when he got _really_ worried. Somnus normally napped throughout the day, and knowing him he likely fell asleep leaning against that tree in the field. Aera was too impatient to deal with a sleeping playmate and would have stomped home to get Ardyn if that were the case, but no matter how many people he asked, none of them had seen Aera and Somnus all day. He even sent one of them to get them home—but that woman returned confused and said that there had been no one around.

Eventually he caught Gilgamesh—the man always knew where Somnus was.

“Have you seen my brother or Aera?”

“Alas, I have not, young lord.”

“Do you have any idea where they are?”

The man frowned, a crease on his surprisingly kind face. The man was a beast in battle, some said, but Ardyn had never seen him in combat. All he knew was the man who had always trailed after his father like a shadow, knew the man who kept Somnus’ urge to compete against everything and everyone under control by giving him a goal.

“He did ask me not to tell you, young lord. But seeing that he also added that if he were not back by sundown,” Gilgamesh looked out of the window, and Ardyn realised with a jolt of horror that the sun was setting and neither Somnus nor Aera were back home. “I should go get them.”

“Where are they?”

“The hills.”

“That’s! That’s so far away! They went on foot!?”

“On foot. I was on my way to the Chocobo stables.”

“Take me with you! That’s an order!”

“Very well.”

* * *

“Somnus. Somnus, get up.”

“Gmph.”

“Somnus, please.”

He cracked open an eye—and jolted back to life immediately with a jolt of fear surging through his body. The sun was setting.

“We fell asleep… We slept through the entire afternoon….” Aera fidgeted awkwardly, her eyes wide and fear plain on her face.

He jumped to his feet. “Where’s the wreaths you made? Put ‘em in the basket. We can still make it back before the sun’s down completely, but we need to hurry. C’mon!”

Aera sniffled, but did as she was told. He’d told her that sunrise was a bad choice. The clearing was so nice, the smell of flowers had lulled them both to sleep, and now they were in trouble. Still, he grabbed the basked and held Aera’s hand in the other as they all but stormed off the hill and back down into the wheat fields. Gods, that endless gold shone so brightly in the light of the sunset. He knew they were both exhausted by the time Aera slowed down. He had lost his sandal somewhere on their march and he had cut his foot on a sharp rock, but he forged onwards as mercilessly as he could despite the sharp pain that show through his leg with every step. Aera tried to get him to stop, said that he was bleeding, but Somnus didn’t care. He felt his legs grow more leaden with every step, and eventually Aera’s hand slipped from his.

There were tears streaming down her face.

Somnus stopped with a sigh and turned around—and froze. There was someone out here, and they most definitely were not someone who tended to the field. The janky movement, the strange gurgle… Somnus acted on instinct by that point, mentally going through every list of how to defend himself that Ardyn, his father and Gilgamesh had ever told him about. He shoved the basket into Aera’s hands.

“Shh. I know your legs hurt—mine do too. But I need you to get this as close to home as you possibly can. Don’t stop for anyone. Don’t turn around. Just get the gifts to Ardyn, ‘kay?”

She whimpered.

“Aera. Promise me you won’t turn around.”

“But. We went together. I’m not going home without you.”

He knew she was perhaps the most stubborn person around. “Aera, please.”

“No! We went together. We go home together.”

Somnus shook his head and instead shoved her into the direction he wanted her to go. “Just go!”

Before she could say anything else, he ran into the other direction, towards the person. She actually turned around and started stumbling away slightly—good. It was important that they did not notice Aera, which meant he would have to demand their attention.

“Hey!” His heart hammered in his chest—he’d not seen someone with the plague up that close before. “Excuse me, I think I’m lost.”

They slurred out something that definitely might have been a word once, and Somnus noted with absolute terror surging through his veins that the sun was nearly gone. There were clouds of what looked like smoke puffing off that person, their features deranged and _terrifying._ Those were the people that Ardyn wanted to save? That hardly looked like a person any longer! And they were… turning. Turning into something grotesque.

Somnus had never been that scared in his entire life—and he’d been scared plenty of times. Scared enough to sneak into Ardyn’s room and crawl until her brother’s covers. Ardyn never said anything whenever he did that, only mumbling something in his half-sleep and then wrapping his arms around Somnus.

A growl. They moved. His legs refused to answer him. Aera behind him screamed.

He was too scared to summon his sword.

But he didn’t have to. A flash of red, the sound of a monster screeching in pain, and someone wrapped their arms around Somnus. A familiar embrace, one that he knew meant he was safe.

“Somnus!”

Somnus turned around and buried his face in Ardyn’s robes. He almost started sobbing when Aera came running over, stumbling over her short and tired feet and also clung to Ardyn and Somnus.

“You foolish, foolish children!”

They both sobbed out an apology. They had both been happy to see Ardyn many times, but right now he might as well have been sent by the gods.

“What were you thinking!”

“I just… wanted to get you something special,” Aera squeaked. “It’s your birthday. So I dragged Somnus out and… and… we fell asleep, and….”

“You,” Ardyn began softly, and put his hands on both of their heads. “are both incredibly stupid. I would rather spend my birthday without anything special as long as you’re both there and we’re having fun. I appreciate the thought, Aera, and I appreciate you playing along with her, Somnus, rather than letting her go alone. And you are both very, very brave. That must have been scary.”

Somnus and Aera both muttered another apology. Somnus knew that Gilgamesh had made true on his promise and gotten here to take them home, which meant that he was the person now approaching and bowing.

“You think the bird will be able to carry all three of us? I don’t think they’re going to let go.”

“It should, young lord. It is not far, and yours is a good bird.”

“Right. Som, Aera? Let’s go home, shall we?”

* * *

By the time they were home again, Somnus and Aera had calmed down. Aera was already animatedly talking about her day out, how much fun she had in town, how nice it had been of Somnus to get her breakfast, how wonderful the clearing and the flowers had been. He would have preferred scolding them both a little more, but seeing the fear fall off them and both of them making jokes as he bandaged up Somnus’ foot back home made his resolve falter a little.

Aera even reached into the basket and pulled out the wreaths she had made from the lilies that grew on that hill, and plopped them down on all their heads. She also handed over the books with a proud look on her face—she had picked them, and Somnus had bought them for her, she declared loudly and proudly. All books that would help him, because a special _and_ useful birthday gift was just _the best._

It was that moment she stopped and handed the basket over to Somnus.

Ardyn had spotted that half-eaten piece of bread in it earlier, but Somnus quietly fished something else from it. A small satchel—Ardyn stared at it with wide eyes.

Aera had already managed to get a handful books that he had been looking for and really only told her about. Most of them were on herbs from the overseas, from her birthplace especially. He quietly took that satchel out of Somnus’ hands and looked inside.

The herbs that went with Aera’s assortment of herbology tomes. Even Aera looked surprised.

“I saw them and recognised them from the book from before. Happy birthday, Ardyn.”

“You foolish, foolish children,” he choked out as he gathered them both in his arms. They sat like that for a few minutes, with Aera happily humming. He turned his head slightly only to see that Somnus had since then fallen asleep with his arms wrapped around him, and Aera was beaming at him as if the sun still shone. “Thank you. Both of you.”


End file.
